


Whom The Gods Love

by TheLionInMyBed



Series: Raised By Wolves [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Gods, Horror, Murder, Poor Life Choices, Rituals, Spiders, Undead, like hella spiders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6839686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLionInMyBed/pseuds/TheLionInMyBed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zathri Il'harren is dead. Her sisters would rather that she stayed that way but unfortunately their mother has other ideas. So do their gods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whom The Gods Love

The skeleton had been stripped clean of flesh. Was that a courtesy, Khamsin wondered, or an attempt to conceal the extent of the injuries their sister had suffered before her death?

Their mother eyed the corpse with unconcealed distaste and then looked up to her surviving daughters. The curl of her lip increased.

“They murder my child and send me back her bones. You daughters who are left to me, I ask you, how will House Il’harren answer?”

The audience chamber was usually bustling with servants carrying messages, with guards, informants and supplicants. They had all been dismissed for this concourse, the great, echoing space given over to four women and a corpse. Khamsin hesitated to speak, to break the suffocating silence, and Amihan, six years younger, found her voice first.

“Mother, we are all grieved by her loss. Zathri was the finest of us-”

“Indeed she was. What have they left me with? A soldier, a politician and a priest? A brute, a craven and a zealot, more like. In the three of you put together I have a decent heir.” Zathri had been the favourite, they’d always known that, but their mother had never before been so crass as to give voice to the sentiment.

Amihan smiled and raised her hands placatingly. “Our feud with the Kona has lasted long enough. They have half again as many soldiers as us and it would be foolish to turn this squabble into a true House war. Let’s not make enemies where we might make friends; Margravine Kona has sons but no daughters. I will go to her and propose a truce, to be sealed when I take one of her sons to wed.”

“Is that your answer? You stand before the bones of your sister and propose a marriage alliance?”

Sharev Il’harren’s voice remained soft but it was tight with anger and Amihan fell silent in the face of it. Khamsin wondered how much of a hand she’d had in Zathri’s death - with her gone, only Khamsin stood between Amihan and her inheritance.

Their mother turned to her.

“Khamsin. My eldest now.” _But not ‘my heir’. Not yet._

“Not taking retribution will make us look weak. A daughter for a daughter is traditional but, as Amihan says, Kona has none. We must start with her sons; by all means let us give them to a daughter of Il’harren. Let our sister have some comfort in her tomb.”

Their mother nodded tightly. “A brute’s answer. But perhaps brutishness is what’s called for. And you, Serikka. What would you have us do?”

Serikka, stood furthest from their mother’s seat, looked up from toying with the holy symbol that hung about her neck. “I would call her back,” she said softly.

For all that Khamsin misliked the suggestion, it was worth it for Amihan’s swiftly masked look of horror. “At what cost?” she asked. “Even were you favoured enough-”

“I am. Do not fear on that count.”

“Even were that so, such powers should not be invoked lightly.”

“‘Lightly’?” Serikka smiled sweetly. “Did you not love your sister, Amihan? Would you not do anything to see her returned to us?”

Love didn’t enter into it. What Khamsin wanted now was blood. “Sacrifices will be required,” she said. “Let us call back our sister and avenge ourselves on the Kona in one move. Let the blood of those boys paint her a passage back to us.” _Let war be unavoidable._

Amihan turned to their mother. “This is not wise. Unravel a tapestry and even have you the same threads, reweave them as you like but it will not be the same cloth. Who knows what we’ll bring back?”

“We won’t know until we try,” Serikka said flippantly. As last born and least favoured daughter she had no real hope of inheritance and would, Khamsin assumed, take a priestess’ vows when she reached her majority. As such there was very little, besides the Lady, she took seriously.

Their mother raised her hand and they all fell silent.

She stared at them each in turn, eyes lingering on their faces, their hands - wrapped about a stone spider, hidden in the folds of sleeves, clenched around the hilt of a sword. And then she looked down to the bones at her feet.

Their advice had been a formality, Khamsin knew. The choice had already been made. Above all else, their mother hated to lose.

“Do it,” said Sharev Il’harren. “Serikka, prepare yourself for the ritual. Amihan, use your contacts. Get her whatever she needs. Khamsin will find us our sacrifices.”

***

There had been too many years between them for true closeness. Zathri was an adult already, tall and strong and self-assured when Khamsin was yet half-grown, gawky and unsure. But Zathri had taken her out drinking when she was - barely - old enough, bought her her first man, taught her the trick of the false thrust with which she killed her first woman.

Still, before too long there came a time when she felt patronized rather than flattered to be invited to tag along behind her sister’s friends. “I’m not a pet,” she had snarled.

“No indeed. My hounds have better manners,” said Zathri with a grin. She said most things with a grin. More soberly; “You are my little sister. When Mother dies-”

“ _If_ Mother dies.”

“ _When_. Be assured that it is when. She will die and I will rule and I will want you at my side. And so, until that time, let us be friends.”

“Not a pet then but a servant.”

“A _sister_. I swear, you have all the subtlety of a mace. We are what she has made of us but you might try sometimes to _think_.”

“Mother’s sisters are all dead.”

“More fool her. More fool you if you think she’s right about everything.”

Their mother was not always right, that was true enough. She had groomed Zathri to succeed her after all, Zathri who was brave and fierce and deadly, a precocious killer, a keen strategist, a charismatic leader. Zathri who smiled too often, was too confident and too glib, who had died unexpectedly and ingloriously in a pointless knife fight with a pair of drunks.

Their feud with the Kona, begun when the other House lobbied for the Council to increase taxation upon the trade in chattel from which Il’harren’s wealth flowed, had been fought in the shadows for almost a decade. It had been largely bloodless, kept to industrial sabotage and political sniping, until Zathri had picked and lost a tavern brawl with the Kona master-at-arms and her sergeants.

She’d brought her death upon herself, Khamsin thought, but for their mother to admit that Zathri had died foolishly was to admit that she had chosen the wrong daughter. And their mother would never admit to being wrong.

Khamsin would just have to force the issue.

She gave orders to her women to assemble in the main courtyard and then lurked in the corridor outside Amihan’s chambers, willing herself still and impassive.

The clack of her sister’s boots on marble preceded her across the stone floor - Ami wore hard-soled shoes with raised heels to make up for her small stature. Even had she been as tall as Khamsin, she would not have been imposing; she a heart-shaped face that dimpled pleasantly when she smiled and her smiles came often. Khamsin distrusted women who smiled too easily and women who prefered spells to the sword even more. Unfortunately, the spying, conniving wizard was the only ally she had in what was to come. It was in neither of their interests for the ritual to succeed. A living Zathri was ahead of them both in the succession and if Serikka could back up her boasts her prospects would rise with her sister.

Amihan slowed when she realised the corridor was occupied, coming to a stop several meters away, well out of range of Khamsin’s sword. There was no smile on her face now and her expression only darkened when she recognized her sister.

“It makes me sick,” she snapped without preamble. “All her talk of family and would she act if one of _us_ were dead? And what of our brothers? She bartered them away like chattel and _now_ she cares?”

Khamsin did not often think of their brothers but, for Amihan, that was the root of it. She had always been too weak, too unwilling to make sacrifices and too close to her twin. When he’d been married to the ruling lady of some out of the way mining colony Amihan had been too angry to attend the ceremony, had sulked for weeks afterwards. The wound had never healed and still festered now, poisoning her every action.

“She made them advantageous matches,” Khamsin said trying, as ever, to be reasonable. “What else could she have done with them?”

“They might have had some say in it. Have you read Mathis’ letters? Košava only lets him send them because she knows Mother will never act.”

Khamsin hadn’t and didn’t see what difference that made. “They did their duty. Just as I will do mine when it comes time for me to take a husband.”

“Yes. Duty.” She spat the word. “If you will excuse me, sister, I go to do mine. I have favours to call in.”

“Hold,” Khamsin said, with perhaps more force than she intended. And then she paused, unsure how best to broach the subject.

Amihan had no such hesitation. A wave and a whispered word wrapped them in a soap bubble of shimmering magic and her smile was back, as wide and bright as ever when she said, “Don’t worry, no one can eavesdrop through that. I suppose you’re plotting sabotage?”

“That’s a dangerous assumption.”

“Oh, don’t be tiresome, Khami.” Amihan waved a hand dismissively, making rainbow facets dance as her spell reflected in the gems adorning her fingers. “You never were good at dissembling. I already have a plan in place, as a matter of fact. You’ll still need Kona’s sons, though. I’ll tell you where to find them - the two youngest will be lightly guarded - and if you move quickly…”

Khamsin moved quickly.

She was a woman of action, a soldier, a brute. What was it to her to intercept a boy on his way to the market with a bolt through his escort’s eye? Leave politics and subtle manipulations to those suited for it; the Lady had fashioned her for battle and it was there that she thrived.

She thought often that she would be better suited to commanding one of Zalach’ann’s many mercenary bands. Her friend Ligeia of the Company of Worms had promised her a captaincy, or she could start her own with the funds she had hidden away. Idle dreams. Obligation bound her to House Il’harren. She could not let go and she would not walk away.

“My strong right hand. But what good is a hand without a mind to guide it?” her mother had said once. She was not wrong. But Khamsin was eldest daughter now and by rights her mother’s heir. Her sisters were no better suited than her; Amihan was cowardly and petty; Serikka fanatical regarding spiritual matters and lackadaisical in all else; Zathri was dead and even were she to return, that she had died at all was condemnation enough. Had she been less arrogant, better prepared, she might have lived. All would be the ruin of their House.

No, it was Khamsin’s duty to take up her birthright and ensure their house’s future. She was the only one in this family with any sense.

***

“Hey Khamsin. _Khamsin_. Do you know why Zathri’s been so calm lately?”

Khamsin glared.

“ _Because nothing gets under my skin_ ,” said the skull.

Khamsin glared harder. It didn’t seem to make an impression, certainly not enough for Serikka to drop her macabre puppet show. “Come on,” she said. “Don’t tell me that wasn’t...humerus.”

The younger boy - he couldn’t have been older than fourteen - was crying and had been for the past half hour, dry hiccuping sobs that set her teeth on edge and left her no patience for her sister’s antics. “Put the skull back on the altar.”

“But-”

“No arguments. You’re not funny.”

Serikka looked to their sacrifices for support. The eldest would not meet her eyes. The younger only cried harder.

“ _She’s right, you know_ ,” said the skull.

“Everyone’s a critic.” Serikka sniffed in mock disgust and then tossed the skull so that it spun in the air, caught it one-handed and set it down at the head of the altar with a hollow clack.

The chapel was large and high roofed but the great drifts of webbing that lined the ceiling muted any echo there might have been. Khamsin personally found the dust-greyed, fly-specked cobwebs unsightly - surely tapestries would achieve the same effect and be more pleasing to any goddess with taste? - but she was neither a priestess not an interior decorator so what business was it of hers?

On the altar in the centre of the room, before the eight armed statue of the Lady of Spiders, they had lain out their sister’s bones, anointed with rare unguents and sprinkled with the dust of powdered jewels. Khamsin hated to think of the cost, even with Ami responsible for the acquisitions. Still, should the ritual fail, they would be left with a fine centrepiece for their next banquet.

Outside, the stamp of booted feet brought her and her sister to attention. The chapel doors opened with the barest whisper, unwieldy bronze made light by divine grace. The filigree of acid-etched designs pulsed like veins in the braziers’ light.

Their mother entered silently, flanked by two of her personal guard, Amihan scuttling in her wake. “Are you ready?”

“We were only waiting for you.”

“Then begin.” Her women ducked out of the room, pulling the doors closed behind them; this was a family affair.

The incense and the smoke from the fires was choking and Khamsin’s eyes watered. Serikka started to chant, firelight and shadow smudging her face into a charcoal sketch. The words were ritualised nonsense, empty praise and invocation, but it wasn’t what was said that mattered. The prayers were a mantra designed to clear the mind, to focus the caster’s will like a whetstone honing a blade.

Khamsin let the words sweep over her. Divine magic was the magic of supplication. Perhaps it could accomplish greater things than a woman calling upon her own power but it felt too much like begging to her.

Drawing an athame from the folds of her robe, Amihan stepped forwards. With a bow and a flourish, she presented it to Serikka who took it up, never dropping the rhythm of her chant, and lifted it so that the light of the braziers bled warm orange across the obsidian.

And then came Khamsin’s part. There was no need for cruelty and so she picked the younger boy; better not to delay it lest he shame himself further. She could only hope that her own children, if she ever had any, would face death with more dignity. She dragged him, struggling, to the altar and pulled back his head to bare his throat.

Her sister brought the knife down and across with a single, elegant motion. The blade was keen as loss and it parted the flesh with only the faintest whisper of sound.

The blood shone in the firelight, twisting ribbons of fine, crimson silk. She resisted the sudden, childlike urge to run her fingers through the flow, to feel it against her skin. But she needed both hands to hold the boy steady as he kicked and thrashed, to ensure that it fell upon the altar and didn’t splatter the floor.

It didn’t take very long for the struggles to stop and the flow to turn from a torrent to a trickle. She let the body flop to the floor like the dead weight that it was and went for the second sacrifice.

The elder boy, a young man in truth, clenched his jaw and did not make a sound when the knife came down. His composure was fragile but there was a defiance in his eyes that, before they glazed over, reminded her of her eldest brother. Even men could die with honour, she supposed.

The blood ran from their sister’s bones in thick, glutinous ropes, puddling beneath the rib cage. The steady dripping kept rhythm with Serikka’s prayer, until suddenly she faltered, coughed and cleared her throat before taking up the chant again. Her voice was weaker though and in her eyes was something close to fear.

Khamsin kicked the bodies out of the way and stepped back from the altar, keeping her triumph from her face. The ritual had failed - that was never in doubt - and now all that was left was the cleanup.

Serikka coughed harder, an awful wet hacking that dragged her to her knees. Fat, dark droplets rolled from her lips and hit the floor like dropped coins. Khamsin stepped forwards and caught her arm while Amihan began some spell but their sister waved them both back, continuing her chant between coughs and ragged gasps for breath.

Between the muted plinks of blood on stone, something else fell to the floor with a tiny, hollow clatter. And then another and another. Little twisted lumps that gleamed almost metallically beneath the marbling of blood.

One twitched, rolled over and unfurled eight tiny, perfect legs.

It hesitated, pedipalps waving delicately and then started towards their sister’s bloody bones.

Serikka continued to retch, dropping her chant entirely to cough out blood and writhing mouthfuls of spiders that scarcely waited to hit the floor before scuttling forwards to blanket Zathri’s corpse in a crawling blanket of chitinous bodies.

 _This wasn’t supposed to happen. It was never supposed to_ work _!_

She and Ami had made sure of that.

Kona’s sons were dead to be sure but they had died hours ago, their bodies burned. The boys they’d found to replace them, peasants dressed in stolen finery, were a paltry sacrifice, unworthy of the Lady of Spiders or any of their gods. Their prayers should have gone unanswered.

But something had listened nonetheless.

Khamsin stepped back towards the altar, awe and horror mingling, as the spiders set to work. They wove fast, spinning silver strands into a shroud, drawing together the edges of a shattered femur, smoothing the awful jut of the ribcage with silk padding. They finished quickly, scuttling away into the shadows, leaving the body encased in soft gossamer, luminously white.

Beneath the webbing Zathri could almost be whole.

Serikka lay slumped on the floor, breathing ragged. Ami crouched at her side while their mother watched impassively from the back of the chapel. She hadn’t stirred throughout the ritual.

Stepping closer to the cocoon, Khamsin reached out and, gingerly, poked it. The silk was dry beneath her fingers and ever so slightly warm. She thought she felt a fluttering of movement run through it.

“ _It is done_ ,” said a voice that was not a voice but a susurrus of insectile scuttling made words. The sound came from Serikka’s mouth and Amihan recoiled from her as though burned.

Serikka smiled a smile that was not hers and pulled herself to her feet. She moved awkwardly and precisely, like someone who was not used to a bipedal frame. Khamsin stepped towards her, sword whispering from its sheath. Amihan, still on her knees, began to whisper too, a spell or a prayer, Khamsin couldn’t tell.

“ _You ask much of us, Il’harren_ ,” she - it - hissed, gliding towards their mother. “ _Perhaps too much_.”

Their mother stood her ground, eyes narrowed, and motioned Khamsin back. The creature stopped in front of her, close enough to kiss. “ _But we are fond of you_ ,” it told her. “ _And so we grant you this boon. You amuse us. See that you continue to do so._ ”

It pressed its lips to their mother’s cheek leaving a smear of black blood and stepped back.

“ _Our regards to your lovely grandchildren._ ” The body collapsed bonelessly, all animation gone. No one moved to catch her. No one moved at all

Their mother broke the silence that held them and if the visitation had shaken her she gave no sign of it. “It said ‘grandchildren’. The brat Košava got off Mathis is the only one known to me. Are there any bastards that I should be aware of?”

Khamsin didn't think that that was the most important thing to focus on right then, with one daughter risen and one perhaps dead, perhaps worse. But then their mother had always planned for the future while Khamsin never looked beyond the next battle. She prodded Serikka’s body with the tip of her sword. It didn’t twitch.

Amihan joined her beside their sister and knelt again to checked her breathing. She nodded to them and rolled her over onto her side. “I can’t believe it worked. She’s going to be insufferable when she wakes,” she said.

“If,” said Khamsin, keeping her voice bland. “ _If_ she wakes.”

“There’s no trace of it left in her. Whatever that was, it’s gone.”

“I trust you two to take care of the mess,” their mother said. “This manifestation was enlightening. I have much to arrange.”

“Mother, we don’t know what that was - the Lady or another of the Eight, or something else entirely. Before we take any action-”

“I believe that you’re capable of vacillating and second guessing enough for all of us, Amihan. I leave it in your hands.” Sharav rapped once, sharply, on the doors. The heavy bronze boomed and they snapped open faster than was seemly. The soldiers on the other side stood rigidly to attention but Khamsin could see their eyes flicking over the scene. She sheathed her sword pointedly, letting the metal scream against the sheath, and their eyes snapped back to face forwards. They would gossip, she thought, watching them fall in behind her mother. Come the morrow the mess hall would be buzzing with rumours, thick as flies upon a midden.

Let them talk. Let the whole damn city whisper of House Il’harren’s risen daughter and the favour of the Lady of Spiders. Whether they were blessed or deceived, it would all end in blood.

Blood suited Khamsin just fine.

***

They found all the blood that she had wanted and more.

But they never did get back their sister. When they cut from the cocoon had her form but little else was left. She still moved beautifully, as taut with purpose as a bowstring, but so rarely now - she was content to sit staring at nothing for hours, days if they would have allowed it. And she did not speak, or even seemed to understand speech directed at her, following instructions as sporadically as a half-trained mutt.

They thought at first that her silences would pass as her flesh warmed and the grave released its hold but time made her no less distant. She took no pleasure in food, drink or the company of men.

When they found the body of a slave in her chambers, cut into half a hundred pieces, they took it for a positive sign. It hadn’t been especially valuable and the frenzied pattern of slashes and stab wounds suggested that she was finally taking an interest in something.

They took the precaution of removing anything sharp from her quarters and sending only their unsaleable stock to clean and bring her food. They also removed the carpets - blood never did wash clean. They still hoped for a recovery.

But then came the business with that courtier, the boy with the striking grey eyes that she’d so admired before her death. Perhaps, Serikka speculated, it was some lingering flame of that attraction that drove her to gouge one out. Silence could be bought of course but he came from a good family and this was far more serious than damaged chattel.

“We can’t keep her,” Khamsin said at breakfast. She’d been there when their sister turned on that grey-eyed boy the day before; he would have lost more than an eye if she hadn’t pulled Zathri off. Their sister’s face had been expressionless from beginning to end.

“We just need to be more careful,” Ami said. For all that she had opposed the resurrection, now that it was done she was reluctant to send Zathri back to where she came from and put a final end to the problem. Always a coward.

“She was returned to us for a reason. It would be foolish to just lock her away.” Serikka had, as predicted, been unbearable since the ritual, convinced she was a new prophet, the earthly voice of Goddess. Fortunately, she also spent hours staring worshipfully at their sister, fussing over her like a father with a newborn child, keeping them both out of everyone’s way. “She just needs something to do. She’s bored.”

Amihan glanced down the table to where their sister sat, staring down at her empty plate. “All she seems to want is...we’ve seen what she wants.”

Khamsin speared a roll with the point of her dagger and tore it in half. “Sell her to the arenas? The university? We’d make good money - maybe even enough to recoup what we spent to raise her.”

“The Lady could not but take that ill. I’ll say again, she was returned to us for a _reason_ ,” Serikka said smugly.

Their mother had been listening to their talk in silence from her place at the head of the table. She’d taken her daughter’s lack of a recovery with surprising equanimity. Apparently the favour of a god was more than fair compensation for what they’d lost. “The Kona,” she said now.

Khamsin usually found her mother’s habit of terse pronouncements infuriating but this one she could support. “Should she succeed or fail, it’s a problem taken care of,” she agreed.

There was a rustle from the far end of the table. Talking over their sister had become habit - she’d never given a sign that she understood or cared to. Now though, she looked up at them. And spoke. He voice was raspy with death and with disuse but still intelligible enough.

“ _Yes_ ,” she said.

For the first time since her return, Zathri smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr in the [obvious place](http://thelioninmybed.tumblr.com)!


End file.
